MIND MIRROR

<Timothy Leary was an american psychologist and writer known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs as LSD in the late 60s and 70s,

and cause of this he got several problem with the law and had to flee away from United States reaching Africa (Tangeri), Switzerland, and Afghanistan.
However in the beginning of 90s, he became fascinated by computers, he thought of computers as “the LSD of the 1990s”, thus he founded the Software House Futique Inc., becoming a devoted to the development of computer software, and in the specific to the virtual reality.

As he explained: the word “cyber” comes from the Greek “kibernetes”, which means “pilot”, and was used for the “pilot” of the boat. Hence, the concept of “pilot of one’s own existence”.

<MIND MIRROR

The most famous video game created by Futique was Mind Mirror, a sort of neural simulator through which the player could explore his own psyche and have the ability to create a map. The game, developed for Commodore 64, Apple and PC-IBM.

Timothy Leary’s scientific career began with The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality (1950), named the best book of the year by the American Psychological Association. The “Diagnostic Grid,” the basis of this book, is the basis of this game.

Timothy Leary’s Mind Mirror is software program that Tim created with Bob Dietz and Peter Van den Beemt back in 1985. It runs on the IBM PC with a CGA graphics card in 4 color mode, on the Apple II, and on the Commodore 64. It requires a floppy drive. It was published by Electronic Arts and sold about 65,000 copies over the course of about two years.

EA wanted to capitalize upon the good doctor’s wild & zany notoriety, and Tim obliged. It is based on Tim’s work on psycho-metrics from the 1950’s and allows users to define, compare and role play personalities. One of the most innovative ideas about the program is that role playing someone else will teach you about yourself and others.

The limitations of the 1985 computers forced many compromises on the presentation of the text and graphics. Electronic Arts abandoned the program many years ago and Timothy’s Estate recently sold its rights in Mind Mirror to the original developers and programmers. They are working with Edward Craig, who has licensed the product, to extend its capabilities to modern computers and the Internet.

Mind Mirror allows the performer to digitize (scope) any thought, compare it with other thoughts and compare thoughts with others, and to engage in simulation of various roles.

A mind-movie version of William Gibson’s epic novel Neuromancer was in development before the project was given to Interplay. The project used similar technology to Mind Mirror.

In 2011, the New York Public Library received many files, many which were unpublished from his company, and within those files, came many experimental video games that were kept private, until now:

“When Timothy Leary died in 1996, he was eulogized as the godfather of the drug-fueled Sixties counterculture. But now, material unearthed in Leary’s archive at the New York Public Library may earn him respect as an early adventurer in another arena: video games… The games were still in development, so they’re buggy, warned Donald Mennerich, the digital archivist who led the project. But Leary’s games, Mr. Mennerich added, are also right in line with some of the ideas about interactivity that prevail in digital culture today… Leary brought an angle of psychological interaction to this idea of interactive gaming, this idea of reprogramming your brain… It didn’t catch on then, but he was pretty far ahead of the curve.”

“The Leary archive, however, does contain another Haring-related surprise: several disks inscribed with hand-written messages from the artist (“Drink Me,” reads one), as well as five digital Haring drawings made with MacPaint software. Ben Fino-Radin, a digital conservator at the Museum of Modern Art whose office is down the street from the library’s digital archives lab in Queens, said that when he saw the drawings his jaw dropped. Computer art isn’t something you associate with Haring, Mr. Fino-Radin said. That’s just part of his story that hasn’t been told at all.”